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Tuesday, January 24, 2017

By Manu SharmaGlobal industrial component and electronic
products distributor R S Components is all set to expand its online trading
platform in India from the existing 30 percent to 50 percent over the next
three to five years.

After 24 years of operations in India, the
UK-headquartered firm has announced a sum of Rs 15 million primarily to support
electronic design engineers and small quantities buyers over the next few years. The company is also strengthening its online market by making the platform more robust, secure and expand its operations in India.

Speaking
to the media, Keith Rice, Head of Emerging
Markets, RS Components Worldwide said, “We have a very strong online marketglobally and sell almost $2 billion electric components online.
Infact, we sell about 70% i.e. $1 billion of our products online through our
portal. However, in India most of our customers surf our website for our products, inquire online via customer support/helpline but when it comes to buying they still prefer offline. This has been the trend in India for a very long time, but is slowly
changing. Today about 30 percent is sold online in India and intend to grow this
market to 50 percent over the next few years. We are also focusing on IoT,
Medical Electronics and Aeronautics, Automotive to expand."

Shiv Bhambri, Chief Executive Officer, R S
Components and Control India said, “We have major customers like the Indian defence - Army, Navy and the Airforce as our major customers and as you are aware
they still purchase products offline. Likewise few others also prefer the offline mode of payment. Now through DesignSpark events, RS plans
to increase the digital awareness among the communities."

The company has opened a new office of 2,000 sqft
of space in Whitefield, the hub for IT and ITes companies in Bangalore. “This
is mainly because we have 6.5 lakh products and over 10,000 customers in India
and that's reason moved to a new location closer to the IT hub, adds
Bhambri.

The new Bangalore Centre will have technical marketing and support teams, specialized sales force that will focus on specific industry verticals like IoT, Medical Electronics, Aeronautics, Automotive among others,

Boeing has announced the formal launch of the
Boeing India Engineering and Technology Center (BIETC) in Bangalore.Hundreds of local Boeing employees will work to support Boeing –
including Information Technology and Data Analytics, Engineering, Research and Technology,
and Test. BIETC will leverage a talented pool of employees to increase
productivity and long-term competitiveness to support Boeing’s engineering
growth in strong global markets like India.

“When we look for regions of competitiveness
for the company around the world, we look at building cost, capability and
market access advantages,” said Pratyush Kumar, president for Boeing India. “In
India we see a true path towards a mutual partnership for success, and the
launch of BIETC is a major step in that direction.”

“The BIETC and the talented people who work
here are strengthening Boeing’s efforts to innovate, compete and win by
providing contributions in key technology areas that make our products and
services more capable and more valuable,” said Greg Hyslop, Boeing chief
technology officer, and senior vice president, Boeing Engineering, Test and Technology.

“Boeing IT has been working in India with
Tier-1 suppliers for many years,” said Ted Colbert, Boeing chief information
officer and senior vice president, Information and Analytics. “The new center
is instrumental in promoting the digital transformation of Boeing by utilizing
India’s talent seamlessly with our U.S. teams.”

With a mix of technically proficient
engineers, BIETC will undertake high quality technology-driven work to support
areas as diverse as the development of advanced environment friendly coatings,
data analytics for next generation Airplane Health Management tools, software
tools for airlines and airports to improve their operations and reduce costs,
automation for more efficient next-generation manufacturing, systems, infrastructure
and analytics.

Monday, January 23, 2017

RS
Components, the world’s largest distributor of electronics and maintenance
products today announced the opening of their innovation hub, a new ‘Electronic Centre’ in Bangalore. The high
service level supplier of electronic components and tools plans to invest close
to $ 15 million over the next two to five years at the Bangalore centre.

The new
2000 Sq feet office in the heart of Bangalore has been set up to support
electronic design engineers and manufacturers in the region. The compay also plans to set up a warehouse
which will enable RS Components to undertake
“next day delivery” to its customers.

The
Bangalore Centre will have technical marketing and support teams, specialized
sales force that will focus on specific industry verticals like IoT, Medical
Electronics, Aeronautics, Automotive and RnD sector.

Speaking
at the launch of the Electronic Centre, Keith Rice, Head of Emerging
Markets, RS Components Worldwide said, “Our Electronic Centre at Bangalore
is a great opportunity to bespeak RS’ strong value proposition in the light of
our technical expertise and tailor made solutions that create a huge difference
in the day-to-day life of a design engineer.”

Talking
about the potential of the Indian market and RS India’s growth Keith Rice
added, “RS envisages India as one of the most promising and high potential
markets. The pace at which the RS India story is accelerating will soon turn
out to be a significant advantage for them on a global landscape.”

Shiv Bhambri, CEO RS Components
India, further added, “The
Bangalore Electronic Centre is a reflection of the strong Indian ESDM market,
as well as the continued growth of the Indian operations of RS Components,
which has been a part of the electronics design and manufacturing story in
India for the past 20 years.”

Explaining
the reason for setting up such a large operation in the city Bhambri said,
“Bangalore has emerged as a major global EDSM hub and recognised as the RnD
capital of India. Most of the Global Industries and PSUs in strategic
electronics have their manufacturing facilities and R&D centres in
Karnataka. Therefore it was important for RS Components in India to further
expand it’s Electronics focused set-up in Bangalore.”

On the
role of the Bangalore office in supporting the local ESDM community, Bhambri said, “The Electronic Centre at Bangalore will be key to RS
Components goal of providing technical training and assistance to Design
engineers and students. The engagements with design engineers will
influence and drive our electronics business which is targeted for high double
digit growth in near future”

RS will
offer value added services to the design community in and around Bangalore including: Organizing workshops on new
technologies and solutions; Running
training programs for EDE and Academia Holding engineer meet ups;New
product launches in collaboration with suppliers, among others

The team at the Bangalore
office will also be actively involved in building up the design
engineering community through DesignSpark.com. DesignSpark provides its
community of over five lakh engineers with free access to design tools like
DesignSparkPCB, DesignSparkMechanical and DesignSparkElectrical.

RS
In India

Elaborating on RS Components unique value proposition to
Indian manufacturers Bhambri says,
“The key to our strategy is that we are a high-service level distributor. No
order is too small, as we believe in supporting every aspect of the business
from concept to preproduction. He
further says, “We offer our customers a choice over 500,000 products from
2500 leading brands along with technical datasheets to help them make an
informed buying decision.”

With e-commerce at the heart
of its business strategy, RS India has one of the most advanced transactional
website offering benefits like parametric search and around 5000 new product
introductions every month.

“We offer the broadest range of semis, passives,
electro mechanical components, test and measurement equipment and
quintessential tools to support every design engineers’ job. We are committed
to provide value add solutions to electronic design engineers at every stage of
design life cycle from concept to pre-production,” concludes Bhambri.

The most
crucial resource for any industry or economy is the human resource, and over
the last decade, there has been a profound shift in the working of human
resource development functions. Sharing of HR Best Practices has been
identified as one of the most prominent areas, especially for developing
countries for maximizing organisational and individual efficiency. Keeping this
in mind, Dun
n Bradstreet, the world’s leading provider of global business information,
knowledge and insights, in association with Sodexo successfully organized “Dun n
Bradstreet India- Sodexo HR Best Practices and Awards, 2017”. The
occasion also marked the launch of the publication, ‘HR Best Practices 2017’.

The publication, ‘HR
Best Practices 2017’, a joint initiative of Dun n Bradstreet and Sodexo
India, captures and showcases some of the excellent and impactful human
resource initiatives and programs adopted and implemented by organisations
across India Inc. Organisations are often faced with a plethora of
talent-related challenges ranging from engaging employees, optimizing
performance, identifying and nurturing of future leaders, retention and many
more. In the modern age, an organisation's ability to come up with and
implement new-age and innovative human capital strategies can help it
successfully deal with its talent-related issues. This publication represents
interesting and effective human resource initiatives undertaken by Indian
corporates pertaining to multiple aspects including recruitment, retention,
talent acquisition, leadership & talent management, employee welfare,
performance improvement and managing diversity among others. The publication
profiles 171 case studies, from 77 organisations, grouped into 5 broad
categories - Recruiting (Talent Acquisition, On-boarding) Living or Environment
(Engagement, Industrial Relations) Growing (Performance Management, LnD)
Rewarding and Caring (Incentives, Welfare, Workplace) and Others (Records
management, HR Analytics)

Delivering
the welcome address, Kaushal
Sampat, President and Managing Director - India, Dun n Bradstreet said
“Technological advances, paired with increased connectivity and interdependence
across countries and geographies, are driving businesses out of their comfort
zones rapidly and has deep implications on Human Resource. The new generations
of young professionals entering the workforce are changing the shape of the
workplace and work culture. Future workplaces will undoubtedly be more
technologically driven and integrating talent across geographies will be an
important part of an organisation’s culture.”

“Our survey findings reveal that more than 60%
of the respondent companies have made use of programs to promote diversity at
the workplace. These include professional development programs, mentoring
programs focusing on diversity, employee networking programs and other internal
communications focusing on diversity.”, he further added

Expressing his views at the event, Rajiv Warrier, Managing
Director, Benefits and Rewards Services, Sodexo SVC India Pvt. Ltd. said
“With an ever-changing people landscape of young India, it is important to
adopt collaborative hiring and talent development practices which act as a win
– win for both individuals and organisations. Our close association with the HR
fraternity in India over the past two decades has helped us understand that it
is time for India Inc. to look beyond the conventional HR approaches. This book
captures some great insights on managing millennials as well as other
industry-leading best-practices.”

With
the objective of creating a knowledge sharing forum, the event witnessed an
interactive panel discussion on ‘Human Resources Management in the Age
of Millennials’. The essence of the panel discussion was to deliberate on
how the role of the human resource function has undergone changes over time and
its status in the current age of millennials.

Sujaya Banerjee, Chief
Talent Officer and Sr. VP – HR, Essar Services India Private Limited said “The Millennials as an Age-Cohort have not been fully
acknowledged in India Inc. as we mostly make the mistake of believing they are
yet another group of young professionals, similar in aspirations like past
generations. Their lens is different and so is their world view. We
Mentored/Parented them so they are thankfully a 'differently similar'
generation. Human Capital Management will need to integrate this world
view to curate new solutions that meet the Millennials more than half way!”

Prashant Khullar, Vice
President and CHRO (Designate), Mahindra Holidays and Resorts India Ltd. “Millennials are not a generation looking just for ‘entitlements’
or any special treatment. They’re looking for greater responsibility and
challenges and are ready to work towards it. What they want is a workplace that
helps them express themselves, build their strengths and help them adapt.”

In a move set to revolutionize labour law
compliance administration and management in India, about 40,000 pages of
complex legalese content has been catalogued into a patent-pending ERP tool –
Simpliance for free public access. Quess Corp, India’s leading integrated
business services provider has bought a 45% stake in Bengaluru-based
Simpliance. The SAAS-based, plug-and-play software will be deployed for labour
compliance management across shops, establishments, factories and enterprises
in the country.

Simpliance has also inked deals with large
Indian Corporates for implementing enterprise-wide compliance across their
pan-India branches. Simpliance is working towards a goal of 10,000 licenses
that will bring in more companies in India under the compliance ambit by
2016-17. It is also set to expand into overseas markets including Sri Lanka,
Malaysia and Singapore by 2016-18.

“Labour compliance industry in India is
currently pegged at Rs 600 crores,” says Anil D’Souza, founder of
Simpliance. “Labour law compliance in India is beset with
complications unlike financial or other industry regulations, which already
have players with designed systems for governance and course correction.”

“India’s growing number of SMEs is becoming
increasingly vulnerable and finding compliance to labour laws is highly
expensive. Adding to the complexity is compliance laws’ inherent inertia: it is
neither replicable nor standardizable across industries. For the first time
ever, Simpliance has automated labour compliance to help companies identify the
regulatory requirements in an intuitive, user-friendly and hassle-free manner.
We will slowly expand its scope to cover all regulatory compliances and
standards in the coming years,” he adds.

Simpliance’s entry comes at an opportune time
when the Indian government is keen on simplifying labour laws. Technology will
play a major role in helping people and companies to understand the context and
perspectives of such laws, making compliance a transparent exercise in the
process. Adherence becomes simpler and conflict resolution faster. Simpliance’s
first of its kind simulation model which is powered by its patent-pending
engine will also power student, HR and Legal Professionals to learn labour laws
in an interesting way than the traditional class room training. It also
improves productivity, transparency and trust as staff and even consumers align
better with an establishment’s corporate vision, mindful of their rights and
requirements.

Worldwide semiconductor revenue is forecast to total $364.1 billion in
2017, an increase of 7.2 percent from 2016, according to Gartner, Inc. This
represents a complete turnaround for the semiconductor industry as the market
experienced 1.5 percent growth in 2016.

"The worst is now
over with a positive outlook emerging for 2017 driven by inventory
replenishment and increasing average selling prices (ASPs) in select markets,
particularly commodity memory and application-specific standard products,” said Ganesh Ramamoorthy, research vice president at
Gartner. “The turnaround that started at the end of the second quarter of 2016
will continue to gain momentum and we expect the improved conditions to carry
through 2017.”

Gartner has increased
the outlook for 2017 by $14.1 billion in its most current forecast, of which
the memory market accounts for nearly $10 billion. “Memory market supply and
demand have turned positive for memory vendors who are pushing ASPs higher to
recover margins. ASP increases for application-specific standard products (ASSP), discrete and analog chips and higher
semiconductor content in key applications including the Internet of Things (IoT)
were the other key drivers for revenue increases,” added Ramamoorthy.

Overall, the mixed growth seen in 2016 will
turn into a broad and more consistent growth in 2017. Areas to watch for in
2017 are the industrial, automotive and storage markets, which are growing
quickly but represent a smaller portion of the overall market. Additionally,
the slow-growth outlook for traditional applications such as smartphones and
PCs highlights the importance of semiconductor markets outside of these
categories, notably the IoT.

"This implies that semiconductor product
managers who have depended upon these categories must now continue to look for
adjacent opportunities in new emerging applications in the IoT and in areas
like industrial, storage and automotive markets," said Ramamoorthy.